Today's Riddle

Q: What's the difference between Dewey LeBoeuf and RIM, maker of Blackberry? A: About six months to a year.

IF YOU HAVE AN OLD IPAD, IT'S GOOD ENOUGH

Yes, the iPad is an amazing device.  If you bought the original, it is two years old.  Only two years old!  The marketing machine at Cupertino works in overdrive to create planned obsolescence.  But do you really need to upgrade every time?  No.  The new iPad 3 has two very cool features:  4G/LTE and the so-called "retina display", which is a marketer's term for very high resolution.  I've seen the new retina display, and yes, it is very impressive.  But, if you have an iPad 1 or iPad 2, the display looks good enough unless you compare it alongside the new iPad 3.  I suggest you don't.  Besides, if you are over a certain age, the improved resolution is probably lost on you.

But what about 4G?  Yes, 4G is very nice.  But guess what?  I have an iPad 1 and I have 4G.  In fact, I've had 4G on my iPad almost since the day I bought my iPad in July 2010.  How?  I have a Samsung 4G "Mifi" card sold by Verizon, called a "jetpack".  See picture below.  It gives me 4G on my iPad, and has the added benefit of allowing me to share my 4G wifi with other devices.  For example, I can share the 4G with my wife's Kindle Fire when we are traveling.  The one disadvantage to the Mifi card is you have to be careful not to lose it.  I have put a a velcro strip on it, along with a velcro strip on my iPad's Cruxcase (see my May 19 review of Cruxcase  at http://thehightechlawyer.blogspot.com/2012/05/must-have-in-every-lawyers-toolkit_19.html) so I don't have to lug it around separately.  Alternatively, I stick it in my pocket.

Notably, the iPad 3 did not come with Siri.  A cynic would conclude that Apple is saving Siri for its next iPad release, in 2013.  Others speculate that Apple might release Siri as a software update to the iPad operating system IOS sometime later this year.  Apple is more secretive than the CIA, so who knows.  If Apple releases Siri as a midstream software release, it might be worthwhile to upgrade, but otherwise, I'd be inclined to wait for the iPad 4 before upgrading.

Reviews of Android Versions of Siri

As my friend Soli pointed out in a recent post, Android phones also have virtual assistants that employ voice recognition.  Perhaps Apple just does a better job in marketing this feature.  Here is an article that reviews the Android apps that are Siri-like.  http://allthingsd.com/20120524/for-hire-good-virtual-assistant-for-android/?mod=mailchimp.  The article favors Speaktoit as the better app.  So if you have an Android smartphone, this article is for you.

The "Must Have" in Every Lawyer's Toolkit: Cruxcase for iPad

            When I go to seminars and glance around the room these days, it is pretty common to see a large sprinkling of iPads.  When I see these iPads, I scratch my head in amazement.  Don't get me wrong.  I love the iPad.  It is an amazing device.  But it has three limitations:  1.  No keyboard.  2. No USB port. and 3.  No ability to print except for a limited number of "Air Play" printers.  I believe there are workarounds for all three limitations, but this article is focused on the first limitation, "no keyboard".  The answer to that limitation is the Crux360 from Cruxcase www.cruxcase.com. 

            The Crux360 turns your iPad from an interesting device for the consumption of media (i.e. paying Apple and Netflix money to watch movies and television shows) to a really useful workplace tool for generating content, i.e,. taking notes, writing memos, answering emails, and anything else that involves typing.  I went through a fair amount of trial and error in the form of about a half dozen bluetooth keyboards and cases with built-in keyboards, before coming across Cruxcase. 

            The Crux360 is perfect.   With it, I can sit in a meeting or a seminar, and take notes fairly inconspicuously with the iPad on my lap.  If I use one of the word processing programs, that are tied to Dropbox, after the file is saved it shows up miraculously on my PC at the office.  A quick digression on word processing software for the iPad:   I use Documents to Go, because I am familiar with it.  However, you might also consider OfficeHD and Quickoffice.  Two other packages that are intriguing are CloudOn and OnLive Desktop. These two programs connect you over the internet to a Windows desktop where you operate true Microsoft Office software remotely on your iPad.  The advantage that brings is that you have all the native formatting of Microsoft Word.  The various office-like apps on the iPad do not have all the formatting capability of Microsoft Word.  Most conspicuously for attorneys, they all seem to lack the redline feature.  With CloudOn and OnLive Desktop you can create and see redlining on your documents. 

            I was one of the first customers of Cruxcase.  The first unit I received was defective, and when I contacted them, they had me return the case and promptly sent me a new unit.  The new unit worked fine, but after about nine months one of the keys stopped responding.  When I contacted Cruxcase, they again had me return the defective case and sent me a new one.  So my take on them is that they are a startup going through growing pains, but they have the sense to take care of their customers and make things right. 

            So I look around the hotel room, and I see all these iPads propped up, and I ask myself, "how do these folks take notes with it?".  As I sit there and type 80 words per minute capturing what is being said, I watch lawyers laboriously peck away on the iPad virtual keyboard. 

            I don't get it.  To me, Cruxcase is the missing link.  Every lawyer with an iPad should have one.

If You Already Have an iPhone, Here is How to Get 4G

            If you already have an iPhone, a startup plans to sell a 4G "sled" or carrying case that will address the biggest deficiency of the iPhone, that it is not a 4G device.  http://tinyurl.com/7p4dqtu

This is News? Verizon Pushing Customers Towards Android Phones

If you go to a Verizon store, CNN Money reported last week that the salespeople will encourage you to buy an Android phone over an iPhone.  http://tinyurl.com/7aktarv  This should not come as a surprise - Verizon makes more money on Android phones than they do on the Apple iPhone.  A year ago I went in to the local Verizon store to buy an iPhone for my wife.  The salesperson talked my wife into an Android phone, on the basis that the Android phone had 4G capability,which the iPhone lacked and still lacks.  Merchants steering customers in one direction or another is an old story.  This is often the case, whether you are buying a smartphone or a dishwasher or a car.  Just be aware that it is happening, and make your purchasing decision cognizant of the fact that the salesperson likely has a financial incentive to sell you one product over another.   

BEING A HIGH VELOCITY LAWYER: IT'S ALL ABOUT THE TOOLS

Recently I wrote an article, "The High Velocity Law Office" that was published in an ABA newsletter (http://tinyurl.com/7xntx3s), and a Texas Bar newsletter (http://tinyurl.com/7aarykf).  One of the constraints of publishing in those environments is you cannot endorse a specific product.  Of course there are no such constraints here in blog-land, so what follows is a product endorsement.  I have received no remuneration for the following product endorsement. 

If I had to pick one piece of technology that most lawyers (and mobile professionals) don't use but should adopt, it is voice mail-to-email.  I started using a service called Phonetag about 4 or 5 years ago.  I figured that by now everyone would have adopted it.  It is baffling to me that this service has not had greater market penetration than it has.  The way it works is you pay about $10/month (for forty transcribed messages, extra if you go over 40) and have your unanswered phone calls forwarded to a number assigned to you by PhoneTag.  When the call is routed to that number, your caller hears your customized message, similar to regular voice mail. and typically you inform callers that their message will be transcribed, and ask them to speak clearly  Phonetag does a very good job of transcribing messages, and sends you that transcription in the body of an email message.  In that email Phonetag also attaches what is called a ".WAV" file of the message so that you can listen to it if you need to.  Occasionally I have to listen to the attached file, but most of the time the transcript is good enough.   

Sometimes, in time sensitive situations, or during a lull in  a business meeting (when attendees are known to furtively peek at their smartphones for messages), or when you are on the go and it is not convenient to dial in for your voice mail, it is extremely helpful to get a transcript of a voice mail message. 

If you don't have Phonetag, and you are looking at ways to increase your productivity, this one is at the top of my list.  www.Phonetag.com

Innovative Use by Law Department of Company-wide "Wiki"

A "Wiki" is not a Hawaiian phrase from the movie The Descendants.  Rather, "it is is a website whose users can add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor."  I got this definition from the most famous wiki of all, Wikipedia.  How is that relevant to lawyers and mobile professionals?  When you think about this definition, a Wiki is basically a way for geographically dispersed individuals to work together in a group. 

 

My colleague John Rentz is General Counsel for Boxer Property here in Houston.  Boxer Property is a very large and successful developer and manager of commercial real estate properties.  Their buildings (and brand) are best known for their yellow signage, which always lists their phone number as:  877-777-RENT.  I find it an amusing coincidence that the last name of their GC is "Rentz". 

At a recent General Counsel Forum event, John discussed how Boxer uses a "Wiki" on its intranet, as follows:

Boxer has 46 leasing agents in 15 different markets in 11 states.  To try and streamline the leasing process, all the states share the same basic form of commercial lease agreement (in an office form and retail form), with slight modifications from state to state to adapt to local rules on things like default remedies.  The problem was that the agents out in the field and in different states were isolated from each other in the sense that it was difficult to see and share what type of common changes were requested by tenants and approved by senior leasing managers and/or the legal department.   To remedy that, and reduce the amount of requests coming up the chain, and thereby speed up the process and put more authority in the agent’s hands, I put together a “wiki” page on the internal Boxer website of approved lease language samples.  It shows a number of common changes that any agent can make, up to more complex or specialty changes for particular types of tenants and situations, that they can use with simple approval from a senior manager, but they have the language in hand ready to mark up.   It is a “wiki” in the sense that employees can post suggested changes to it, subject to an internal approval process.

I was feeling pretty good about the fact that we had developed an online library on our company's intranet of all our key documents.  But Boxer has taken it to the next logical step, using a Wiki as a forum for its employees to conduct work as a group.  Does your company or law firm have a Wiki?

Useful Article on Apps that are Guides to Major Airports

http://tinyurl.com/cetuuzy

Useful Article: How to Protect Your Browsing Privacy

The core recommendation is:  "Regardless of which search engine you use, security experts recommend that you turn on your browser’s “private mode,” usually found under Preferences, Tools or Settings." http://tinyurl.com/bseurk4

I'll Bet You Don't Know what a MOOC Is

A MOOC is a "massively open online course".  Is this the next Big Thing?  Harvard and MIT are joining together to offer free online courses.  Other top universities are piling in as well.  One course offered by MIT called "Circuits and Electronics" enrolled 120,000 students.  That is definitely massive!  The article link reviews the major players in this quickly emerging area.  This is great for learning.  Venture capital is pouring money into it as well.  How these universities and venture capitalists intend to make money off of free online learning is a mystery to me, but if the universities are willing to provide MOOCs, who are we to look a gift MOOC in the mouth?     http://tinyurl.com/86j64gb

Off-Topic: Dewey LeBoeuf and the Supply/Demand Imbalance

The imminent and tragic demise of Dewey & LeBoeuf compels me to post something off topic today.  The referenced article interviews a prominent attorney who is about to publish a book aptly titled, "Declining Prospects."  http://tinyurl.com/7m4etyp

Fundamentally, there is a supply-demand imbalance in the market for lawyers.  In real estate, when there is an oversupply, developers stop developing, and lenders stop lending.  In the legal profession, the oversupply is created and fed by an excess of law schools.  The law schools have no incentive to cut back on enrollment, as apparently the schools are money makers.  And apparently there is no shortage of applicants to law school.  If you are thinking of law school, you have to understand the grim odds.   If you get into a top tier school and are in the top 10% of your class, you will probably do fine.  Our winner-take-all society creates a steep cliff, with a small group of elites clustered at the top of the cliff.  After that, everyone else is at the bottom, struggling. 

Caveat emptor.  


We'll get back to tech issues shortly....

The Battle for our Hearts and Minds (and Wallets)

The competition between tech companies reminds me a lot of the board game Risk.  Do you remember Risk?  I played it a lot back in law school.  It is a battle for world domination between countries/players.  Think Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon as the superpowers.  Microsoft as the once-powerful country in decline. The smaller companies that wish to survive find defensible niches, or strike alliances with the big guys.  The big guys each started from a core platform, and extend out from there.  Apple's core is hardware, with its proprietary software embedded in it.  Google's core is search, and an ever-expanding array of internet/cloud-based tools and software.  Facebook's core is social media.  Amazon's core is e-commerce.

Here's a blog post that suggests the Android platform is in trouble.  Why?  Because as the enterprise market (i.e., corporate IT departments) starts to open up and support non-Blackberry phones, the IT folks who manage it prefer the Apple world because it is easier to manage.  There are only a few flavors of IOS, whereas Android has multiple different versions, and phone manufacturers customize their Android phones, making it harder for the IT folks to support and manage versus the tightly controlled Apple platform.  The diversity of Android makes it more attractive in one sense, in that there can be more innovation, but that is offset by the fact that it is less uniform.  Here's a blog post from the New York Times that talks about some of this:   http://tinyurl.com/7o845ac  

There is a lot of speculation that Google might have to enter the hardware business.  Apple has a big advantage by having control over its platform.  Google's advantage is that it can leverage many other manufacturers by being an open source to them.  The downside, of course, is lack of uniformity and interoperability.  So Google surely is thinking about making its own smartphones and tablets.  Maybe designing the phones and tablets and letting others manufacture and sell it under their label?  That might be the way to go.  It's hard to compete with your customers.

Like the board game Risk, a superpower has to avoid a situation where its enemy gets to a tipping point.  Things go downhill in a hurry after that.  Think RIM. 

It's hard to believe, but just a few years ago Google's Eric Schmidt sat on the board of Apple.  Now these two behemoths are locked in mortal combat.  Kind of like King Kong battling Godzilla.  Us customers are on the ground watching in fascination and trying to avoid getting trampled.  It would be perilous to predict how this will turn out. 

WHAT'S AHEAD FOR BLACKBERRY SUFFERERS (CUSTOMERS)

The demise/death spiral of RIM, maker of Blackberry smartphones, has been well-chronicled in the business press. It has gotten so bad that even in the corporate world, where Blackberry had been entrenched, Blackberry's hold is starting to crumble.  The so-called "BYOD" or Bring Your Own Device movement, is catching on, and corporate IT departments are beginning to allow non-Blackberry smartphones to be deployed.  This trend will only accelerate, and those of us with aging Blackberry smartphones are faced with the dilemma of what to do next.

There are three options:  1.  Wait it out with Blackberry.  2.  Switch to iPhone, or 3. Switch to Android. 

The first option, sticking with Blackberry means waiting for RIM to come out with its new Blackberry 10 series of phones. I can't recommend this approach.  However, this may have appeal to a small subset of customers.  People who are happy with their current Blackberry, even if it is several years old.  People who hate virtual keyboards.  The problem with this approach is that there is substantial risk that RIM will go the way of Palm and other once-popular tech products that eventually wither and die off.  How many platforms/operating systems will the market support?  Two, maybe, just maybe, three.  That means Apple and Android occupying the first two slots.  Fighting it out for the number three spot are RIM and Microsoft/Nokia.  That is even assuming there is room for a third player.  This is a little like hanging on to the deck of the Titanic in the hopes that it won't sink.   You are simply postponing the inevitable transition from a doomed, orphaned platform. 

The other two options are to switch to Android or iPhone.  If you are thinking of switching to the iPhone, I suggest you wait until later this year.  Sometime around October or November, Apple will likely come out with the iPhone 5.  It will finally have 4G/LTE technology, which is worth the wait, particularly if you are a Verizon customer.

The biggest complaint I hear from iPhone users who are former Blackerry users is the virtual keyboard.  Especially the dreaded Auto-Correction feature.  My advice to anyone who has an iPhone and who hates the Auto-Correction feature is to disable it.  Here's how:  Go into Settings, and under General, scroll down to near the bottom of the list of options.  Near the bottom you will see buried the word "Keyboard".  If you touch the word "Keyboard", the iPhone will display a list of options, the second one being "Auto-Correction".  Turn it off by pressing the On/Off toggle switch with your finger.

For Blackberry users who hate virtual keyboards, the Android world offers more options.  The Verizon store I visited had two Android phones with slide out keyboards.  Unfortunately, neither had the beveled keys that you find with Blackberry phones, but rather a flat keyboard that I found tricky/difficult to use.  More models may be coming out shortly, and perhaps you can find one that works for you.  If you get an Android phone with a keyboard because you value that feature so much, be sure that the phone has the latest version of Android (currently the so-called "Ice Cream Sandwich" version), and that it is an LTE 4G phone.

For the rest of us Blackberry customers who prefer a keyboard but will grudgingly adapt to a virtual keyboard, I suggest the iPhone platform over Android.  Assuming you are willing to wait for the iPhone 5 so that you get the 4G/LTE experience.  Why iPhone over Android?  The biggest reason is Siri.  Siri is sensational, a real game changer.  Instead of typing, your voice becomes the interface.  Here's the anecdote that sold me:  we are having dinner at a restaurant after seeing the movie "The Descendants."  I wonder how old George Clooney is.  Someone at the table had an iPhone 4S.  I borrow it, press the Siri button and say, "Siri, how old is George Clooney?"  Siri comes back with an excerpt from an online source (Wikipedia perhaps) that gives his exact birthdate.  I was impressed.  Imagine driving to work, and you have a thought and you simply speak to your phone and say, "Siri, remind me after work to pick up my drycleaning."  And that evening, before you leave the office, Siri reminds you to pick up the drycleaning. 

I can't wait for the iPhone 5.

Overlooked by Mainstream Press? Series of Articles on IBM by Cringely

Well-known tech blogger Robert Cringely has written a series of articles about IBM on his web site blog www.cringely.com.  I'm not a follower of IBM so I have no idea whether what Cringely is saying is true.  The allegations are sensational, having to do with alleged plans by IBM to cut its workforce in the U.S. and Canada by 70-85% in the next few years, by offshoring its service workers.  The articles have been ignored by the mainstream press.  This is surprising, given Cringely's stature in the tech world.  I'm betting it will be picked up somewhere by Big Media sometime in next few weeks.  Similar to the Trayvon Martin story, maybe this has to percolate for a while before it gets picked up by the big guys.  If so, you heard it here first!

Long Before There Was Google Maps, There Was PC Maps

Two articles from the New York Times, one in 1992 heralding the arrival of PC Maps, another in 1994 after the product was renamed "City Streets":


http://tinyurl.com/8xwvc6y
http://tinyurl.com/d8yo2yp


The 1992 article was called "Practical Traveler; The Maps Are In the Computer".  How long ago was 1992?  The article advises potential buyers that the program requires "about 460 kilobytes of free working memory.  A hard disk is required."  Later on, the article goes on to mention, "CD-ROMs, little disks similar to the musical kind, are catching on as a way to package computer programs."  The operating system at that time was MS-DOS.  Microsoft Windows was still a work in progress at the time, and Al Gore had not yet invented the internet.

THE HIGH-VELOCITY LAW OFFICE - How State-of-the-Art Document Management Can Accelerate and Transform Law Practice

Link to State Bar of Texas Corporate Counsel Section, Spring 2012 Newsletter http://tinyurl.com/7aarykf


Link to ABA Newsletter, Technology for the Litigator, Spring 2012 http://tinyurl.com/7xntx3s